Children and Youth
Religious Education Director – Sybil Argintar
dre@uucs.org
General Spiritual Resources for Families
Soulful Home
https://www.soulmatterssharingcircle.com/uploads/9/4/5/0/94501751/2021-03_sh_commitment.pdf
Soulful Home for March: Commitment
Poetry and Readings for Inner Strength, Peace, Hope, Healing, and Beauty
Instructions on Not Giving Up by Ada Limón
More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.
RE Connections for All Ages for Week of March 22, 2021
For a more detailed list of resources and activities for all ages, follow this link.
General Spiritual Resources for Families
https://www.uua.org/pressroom/press-releases/held-care
You Are Held In Care – message from UUA president Susan Frederick Gray
Poetry and Readings for Inner Strength, Peace, Hope, Healing, and Beauty
Still I Rise
by Maya Angelou (1928 – 2014)
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.
RE Connections for All Ages for Week of March 1, 2021
For a more detailed list of resources and activities for all ages, follow the link above.
General Spiritual Resources for Families
My Experience with the Eighth Principle
https://www.uua.org/midamerica/news/blog/my-experience-8th-principle
Parenting In A Time of Social Distancing
https://email.nationalgeographic.com/H/2/v600000177c58912e8a640da6e96639818/e5e3f019-5f27-489c-9431-4611efcc4802/HTML
What Really Inspires Kids? (real life heroes)
Poetry and Readings for Inner Strength, Peace, Hope, Healing, and Beauty
May we never forget….
Ballad of Birmingham
by Dudley Randall
“Mother dear, may I go downtown
Instead of out to play,
And march the streets of Birmingham
In a Freedom March today?”
“No, baby, no, you may not go,
For the dogs are fierce and wild,
And clubs and hoses, guns and jails
Aren’t good for a little child.”
“But, mother, I won’t be alone.
Other children will go with me,
And march the streets of Birmingham
To make our country free.”
“No baby, no, you may not go
For I fear those guns will fire.
But you may go to church instead
And sing in the children’s choir.”
She has combed and brushed her night-dark hair,
And bathed rose petal sweet,
And drawn white gloves on her small brown hands,
And white shoes on her feet.
The mother smiled to know that her child
Was in the sacred place,
But that smile was the last smile
To come upon her face.
For when she heard the explosion,
Her eyes grew wet and wild.
She raced through the streets of Birmingham
Calling for her child.
She clawed through bits of glass and brick,
Then lifted out a shoe.
“O, here’s the shoe my baby wore,
But, baby, where are you?”
Music for All Ages
Social Justice Inspiration
Stand Up (Cynthia Ervio) – from the movie Harriet (see below)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sn19xvfoXvk
RE Connections for All Ages for Week of February 22, 2021
Thirty Days of Love
Look at some ways the UUA has for extending lovingkindness out into the world over the next month. There is something there for all ages—videos, books to read, Zoom workshops.
https://sidewithlove.org/thirty-days-of-love
• Week One: Living Our Values in the World (January 17 – 23)
• Week Two: Hospitality and Inclusion (January 24 – 30)
• Week Three: Educating for Liberation (January 31 – February 6)
• Week Four: Restoration and Reparations (February 7 – 13)
Poetry and Readings for Inner Strength, Peace, Hope, Healing, and Beauty
A Small Needful Fact (Ross Gay)
Is that Eric Garner worked
for some time for the Parks and Rec.
Horticultural Department, which means,
perhaps, that with his very large hands,
perhaps, in all likelihood,
he put gently into the earth
some plants which, most likely,
some of them, in all likelihood,
continue to grow, continue
to do what such plants do, like house
and feed small and necessary creatures,
like being pleasant to touch and smell,
like converting sunlight
into food, like making it easier
for us to breathe.
General Spiritual Resources for Families
Soulful Home https://www.soulmatterssharingcircle.com/uploads/9/4/5/0/94501751/0221_sh_beloved_community.pdf
Soulful Home for February: Beloved Community
Parenting In A Time of Social Distancing
https://www.highlightskids.com/asks/share-with-us/HaH-do-kind-things
Do Something Kind for Others
Music for All Ages
Social Justice Inspiration
When We Are Singing (Social Justice Choir Songbook)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkKzP541jCQ
RE Connections for All Ages for Week of February 8, 2021
Thirty Days of Love
Look at some ways the UUA has for extending lovingkindness out into the world over the next month. There is something there for all ages—videos, books to read, Zoom workshops.
https://sidewithlove.org/thirty-days-of-love
• Week One: Living Our Values in the World (January 17 – 23)
• Week Two: Hospitality and Inclusion (January 24 – 30)
• Week Three: Educating for Liberation (January 31 – February 6)
• Week Four: Restoration and Reparations (February 7 – 13)
Poetry and Readings for Inner Strength, Peace, Hope, Healing, and Beauty
A Small Needful Fact (Ross Gay)
Is that Eric Garner worked
for some time for the Parks and Rec.
Horticultural Department, which means,
perhaps, that with his very large hands,
perhaps, in all likelihood,
he put gently into the earth
some plants which, most likely,
some of them, in all likelihood,
continue to grow, continue
to do what such plants do, like house
and feed small and necessary creatures,
like being pleasant to touch and smell,
like converting sunlight
into food, like making it easier
for us to breathe.
General Spiritual Resources for Families
Soulful Home https://www.soulmatterssharingcircle.com/uploads/9/4/5/0/94501751/0221_sh_beloved_community.pdf
Soulful Home for February: Beloved Community
Parenting In A Time of Social Distancing
https://www.highlightskids.com/asks/share-with-us/HaH-do-kind-things
Do Something Kind for Others
Music for All Ages
Social Justice Inspiration
When We Are Singing (Social Justice Choir Songbook)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkKzP541jCQ
RE Connections for All Ages for Week of February 8, 2021
Thirty Days of Love
Look at some ways the UUA has for extending lovingkindness out into the world over the next month. There is something there for all ages—videos, books to read, Zoom workshops.
https://sidewithlove.org/thirty-days-of-love
• Week One: Living Our Values in the World (January 17 – 23)
• Week Two: Hospitality and Inclusion (January 24 – 30)
• Week Three: Educating for Liberation (January 31 – February 6)
• Week Four: Restoration and Reparations (February 7 – 13)
Poetry and Readings for Inner Strength, Peace, Hope, Healing, and Beauty
Here’s another one by Amanda Gorman:
Earthrise (excerpt)
So I tell you this not to scare you,
But to prepare you, to dare you
To dream a different reality,
Where despite disparities
We all care to protect this world,
This riddled blue marble, this little true marvel
To muster the verve and the nerve
To see how we can serve
Our planet. You don’t need to be a politician
To make it your mission to conserve, to protect,
To preserve that one and only home
That is ours,
To use your unique power
To give next generations the planet they deserve.
We are demonstrating, creating, advocating
We heed this inconvenient truth, because we need to be anything but lenient
With the future of our youth.
Read it in full here:
Earthrise https://naaee.org/eepro/blog/earthrise-poem-amanda-gorman
Watch her recite it here:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/xwOvBv8RLmo?autoplay=1&auto_play=true
General Spiritual Resources for Families
Soulful Home https://www.soulmatterssharingcircle.com/uploads/9/4/5/0/94501751/0221_sh_beloved_community.pdf
Soulful Home for February: Beloved Community
Social Justice
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeCzzRY_RI8
“Birth of A New Nation” speech by Martin Luther King Jr., 1957